For centuries both women have been reviled as collaborators in Spanish conquests of the new world that verged on genocide. La Malinche was an Aztec turncoat who helped Hernán Cortés conquer Mexico; Inés Suárez was a Spanish seamstress who joined another conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia, in slaughtering the inhabitants of Chile.
Now two of Latin America’s female literary giants, Laura Esquivel and Isabel Allende, have come to the rescue by writing novels casting them as misunderstood heroines who could be role models for today’s women.
Some critics have balked at the revisionism, saying the novels gloss over the rape and savage subjugation that accompanied the 16th century colonial invasions of Central and South America.
Allende (64) whose Inés of My Soul is published this week by HarperCollins, depicts the seamstress as a warrior, adventurer and founding mother of Santiago who built hospitals, dug wells and fed the poor — in addition to beheading enemies.
The author of The House of the Spirits said male perspectives had dominated the history of the conquests and that in four years of research she had learned to appreciate Suárez and her rise from a humble birth in 1507.
As a young wife Suárez crossed the Atlantic in search of her missing husband. Upon discovering she had been widowed she decided to stay, became the lover of De Valdivia, a lieutenant to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, and accompanied his small band of soldiers in battles against tribes in Peru and Chile.
Drawing on documented events, Allende’s 10th novel tells the story as an adventure-packed, romantic and occasionally raunchy epic casting Suárez as a fiery and independent spirit who lived life to the full. “What seduces me particularly about Inés is her refusal of oppression in any form,” Allende told one reviewer.
Several critics complained it glides over the violence and disease that wiped out indigenous peoples. “There is not much from the other side of the conquista story beyond the Spaniards’ view of them as savages,” said the Miami Herald.
In recent years much of Latin America has hardened its view of the conquests and renamed what was Christopher Columbus Day — in honour of the European navigator who reached the continent in 1492 — Indigenous Resistance Day.
Esquivel, the Mexican author of Like Water for Chocolate, has drawn fire for a novel published earlier this year, Malinche, which rehabilitates an Aztec slave whose name has entered folklore as a byword for treachery based on sketchy historical details that she was a translator for Cortés as well as his lover. Esquivel portrays her as a freedom fighter against the Aztecs — who had oppressed and betrayed the spiritual legacy of her Mayan ancestors — and the architect of a rich, mixed heritage.
“The process of the conquest was painful, yes, but it was also the basis of a wonderful cross breeding,” the author told one reviewer. “I would love it if my Malinche became a role model for those women today who must ‘conquer’.” — Â